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The Atrocious Journey

Love: How that word slides off the tongue,
Like a licorice serpent rolling along.
Disheartening prune ladies, intriguing the young,
Bewildering the brave and the strong.

We all seek to find it, though it might not exist,
We dig in trenches with leeches.
We journey along from the moment we’re kissed,
Striving for lips that taste of peaches.

The man next door has found true love with his cats,
He dresses them in ties and tuxedos.
He pours them tea and sits cross-legged eating rats,
While they feast on mice stuffed burritos.

Multiple loves belong to little Dee down the street,
She invites boys to her orange juice stand.
The nectar of her voice and her fingers so sweet,
The boys leave with their hearts in their hands.

Mrs. Prunella has wrinkles in which teardrops settle,
She has not a mirror in her home.
At times she purposely forgets to turn off the kettle,
So the fireman can save her from being alone.

The Mulroneys have been married for twenty odd years,
And they’ve cheated on each other for ten.
Once a month when Mrs. Mulroney disappears,
Mr. Mulroney becomes peculiarly smitten.

Old Jack only opens his heart for a beer,
He waltzes with a bottle of whiskey.
‘Cause women are muddy and vodka is clear,
A shot glass is neither moody nor frisky.

Caroline’s lover is a name on a gravestone,
Yet she talks to him as if he were there.
She tells him, oh how much you have grown!
And compliments him on his new style of hair.

I wished to discover this love, this grail,
Then stuff it in my pocket and flee.
Yet I could find it to no avail,
It left my aching heart in debris.

The man next door had cats that were wild,
They roosted on the couches and wept.
They scratched open the doors and he smiled,
All the cats fled astray as he slept.

Little Dee pounded yet another’s soul into ash,
And it was the last schoolboy in town.
She sold the boy’s hearts for pennies in cash,
Until there was no love all around.

Mrs. Prunella married the firefighter for a year,
When she over boiled the kettle she shouted, fire!
But the firefighter did not have his equipment here,
His untimely death was quite dire.

Mrs. Mulroney was caught with Old Jack,
As they breast stroked through red wine.
Mr. Mulroney received a huge smack,
When he called her an unruly swine.

Love always ends in feelings of hollow,
Like Caroline’s lover, ours is, too, gone.
This horned hedge of truth is dreary to swallow,
Reeking of sadness, regret, and so on…

This ends the tale of a journey so atrocious,
That it can only exist in the feebleness of words.
For if love were real, it would be too ferocious,
As it would chew on our innards like curd.

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